New York|After Nearly 75 Years, and Countless Knots, a Boy Scout Leader Is Retiring

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After Nearly 75 Years, and Countless Knots, a Boy Scout Leader Is Retiring

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Julio Balde, 95, at his home in Nutley, N.J. Mr. Balde has led the Boy Scouts of Troop 102 of Newark for nearly 75 years, but on Saturday the troop will meet for the last time.CreditCreditChristopher Occhicone for The New York Times

By Megan Jula

June 22, 2016

NUTLEY, N.J. — His arthritic fingers brought the ends of the rope together, intertwining them slowly but with obvious familiarity.

He narrated: Left strand over, right strand through, as he demonstrated in his home here. He wore his favorite T-shirt, the one with the green Troop 102 logo that a member designed.

“And that,” the scoutmaster, Julio Balde, said, proudly holding up the two pieces he entwined, “is how you tie a square knot.”

For almost 75 years, Mr. Balde has taught survival skills and the importance of civic engagement to the Boy Scouts of Troop 102 of Newark.

But on Saturday the troop will meet for the last time. After more than 80 years as an active member of the Boy Scouts of America, Mr. Balde is retiring and disbanding the troop.

His daughter, Anita Balde, estimated that more than 1,000 boys have been part of the troop, which meets weekly at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in the Ironbound section of the city.

On Friday, his 95th birthday, Mr. Balde said that the best thing about all those years was “when these kids grow up and they still think of you as their second father.”

When Mr. Balde started in scouting, he had to learn how to tie nine knots; now, he requires his scouts to learn just four. In the 1960s, more than 100 boys belonged to the troop. Today, there are only six members, and four of them are graduating from high school this month.

Though Mr. Balde’s mind is sharp, he said that his physical health reflected his age and that his doctors had advised him to slow down.

He still climbs the steep, curving stairs to his second-floor bedroom — only recently did he let his daughter have handrails added — and still drives to scout meetings every week.

Mr. Balde joined scouting at 15, when pressured by his Portuguese-immigrant parents. His family had moved to the Ironbound, a Portuguese enclave, when he was 2.

Mr. Balde in his scoutmaster uniform in the late 1940s with his mother.CreditChristopher Occhicone for The New York Times

So much so that when he proposed to his wife, Joan, he told her that scouting would always be a priority. Mr. Balde recalled Joan cooking spaghetti and meatball dinners on Sundays for his hungry scouts. She died 23 years ago, a few months shy of their 50th anniversary.

For about 45 years, Mr. Balde worked for Artley Inc. in Newark, designing and building displays for trade shows until the company closed in 1996. For the next 10 years, he was a consultant. He stopped working at 85.

The Boy Scouts could not say if Mr. Balde was its longest-serving scoutmaster, but in an email on Monday the group said he was “certainly one of our longest tenured scouting volunteers in our organization’s history.”

Eric Adams, the assistant scoutmaster for Troop 102 and assistant finance director for the City of Newark, praised what Mr. Balde had done for so many boys. “You would be hard-pressed to find someone who has trained more leaders,” Mr. Adams said. “But he would never take credit for it.”

Mr. Balde said he helped 43 young men become Eagle Scouts, the highest rank a Boy Scout can achieve.

“I’m proud of all my boys,” he said, then listed some of their accomplishments. “I’ve had dentists, doctors, lawyers and an undertaker.”

And at least one convict, he added, but there are always a few bad apples.

Lucille Krutsick, 80, a Newark resident, has been a troop volunteer for more than four decades and considers the Baldes family.

“As much as I know in his heart he didn’t want to,” Ms. Krutsick said, it was time for Mr. Balde to step down because of his declining health as well as the waning interest in scouting.

Her two sons became Eagle Scouts while in Troop 102.

One of them, Michael Krutsick Jr., 56, remembered Mr. Balde allowing the boys to learn from their mistakes and also credited the scoutmaster with instilling in him a desire to give back.

“Instead of saying, ‘We need this,’” Mr. Krutsick said, “he taught us to say, ‘We need this and I am here to help.’”

Bryan Aguilar, 17, who joined Troop 102 seven years ago, said Mr. Balde taught him to respect others and helped him “form the young man I am today.” He graduated from East Side High School in Newark on Monday and will attend Ramapo College of New Jersey in the fall.

“Because of his age and because he has lived through so much,” Bryan said, “he teaches us life lessons that my parents couldn’t teach me because they haven’t lived that long yet.”

Reclining in his armchair, black slippers snug on his feet, Mr. Balde mirrored a picture on the mantel: a younger scoutmaster with a glowing smile and thick glasses. Around his neck was a medallion for the silver beaver, the highest honor an adult volunteer in scouting can receive.

Citing the Boy Scout motto, he said, “‘Be prepared’ means be prepared with a smile.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: After Nearly 75 Years, a Scout Leader and Mentor Hangs Up His Uniform. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe